Editorial: Sour grapes

Re­pub­lic­ans just can’t get over the fact that a rook­ie U.S. sen­at­or with no ex­ec­ut­ive ex­per­i­ence but tons of cha­risma cleaned the clock of a Vi­et­nam War hero and vet­er­an U.S. sen­at­or a quarter-cen­tury his seni­or to be­come the lead­er of the free world.

That’s right, ladies and gen­tle­men, the Grand Old Party is still smart­ing from Barack Obama’s big win over John Mc­Cain in 2008, and Re­pub­lic­ans won’t be happy un­til they drive him out of of­fice — whatever it takes.

You can bet your life’s sav­ings that a shame­fully large num­ber of Re­pub­lic­ans hope the U.S. eco­nomy re­mains in the pits at least un­til Elec­tion Day 2012, be­cause battered voters likely will vote Mr. Obama out of of­fice. Lead­ing the dis­loy­al op­pos­i­tion is the U.S. Sen­ate’s top Re­pub­lic­an, Minor­ity Lead­er Mitch Mc­Con­nell, who pub­licly stated his top le­gis­lat­ive pri­or­ity is to make sure Barack Obama does not get re-elec­ted.

In Har­ris­burg, a move by the ma­jor­ity lead­er of the Pennsylvania state Sen­ate, Domin­ic Pi­leggi, would go a long way to achieve that. The Delaware County Re­pub­lic­an has in­tro­duced a bill that would end the “win­ner takes all” sys­tem of award­ing Pennsylvania’s 20 elect­or­al votes — which have gone to every Demo­crat­ic pres­id­en­tial nom­in­ee since 1992 — and in­stead give those votes to the win­ners of each con­gres­sion­al dis­trict.

That’s a great idea — but only if every oth­er state in the uni­on ad­opts the same sys­tem. What’s good for blue-state Pennsylvania should be good for red-state Texas. An even bet­ter idea is to ab­ol­ish the Elect­or­al Col­lege and al­low the pres­id­en­tial can­did­ate who gets the most pop­u­lar votes to — GASP! — be­come pres­id­ent.